


Sabbat in Boston

by 00shade



Category: Holy Trinity (YouTube RPF), PewDiePie (YouTube RPF), Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), gaming youtube, jacksepticeye, markiplier - Fandom, youtube - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Turned Into Vampire, Internal Conflict, Other, Slow Burn, Vampire Turning, Vampires, YouTube, YouTubers - Freeform, and so is mark, college student Jack, pewdiepie - Freeform, robin is in this too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8507428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/00shade/pseuds/00shade
Summary: Jack is a college student studying abroad in Boston, MA when he's attacked in the dark streets by what appears to be some random drug addict.





	1. Rainfall

The sound of rain pattered against the sidewalk as a college student walked by, stepping in puddles every so often with a pitiful splash. The work day was over- he had just gotten off, and the only thing he could think about was the hot shower waiting for him in his crappy apartment. It was cold; he could see his breath forming little clouds in front of his face, disappearing as fast as they came by. The lack of noise made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he instinctively began to walk faster. Although Jack loved the city of Boston (it reminded him of his homeland), it was still unsafe to be walking alone after dark. 

He cut across the road to walk down a low lit alleyway, the only source of light being the street lamps he just walked past. His keys were jangling in his coat pocket, making the small _ring-ting-ting_ noise that told him they hadn't fallen out of his pocket on the way home. He saw a shivering form sitting against a wall, a man wrapped in his coat and drenched from the Massachusetts rain. A pang of guilt shot through Jack's stomach, but as a poor college student, he didn't have much to give. If he could, he would, but instead he kept on walking without hesitation. He averted his eyes so he wouldn't feel so bad about it. 

As he walked away, he felt something grab his arm. It wasn't a strong grip, but hard enough to keep him in place. Jack turned around, wondering what the hell had grabbed him and why. It was the homeless person from before- but they were standing up and staring at him, without blinking. "The hell? Dude, let go of me." His voice didn't shake as he tried to yank his arm away from the man, who didn't appear to be any taller than he was but had a grip of iron, but the action made him extremely nervous and uncomfortable. His chest began to curl into itself, stomach doing flip flops the longer the two stood there. He tried to yank his arm away again, and this time, he got a reaction. 

The man with drenched red hair and some slight stubble pushed Jack against a wall; Jack's head smacked against the brick behind it, stars twinkling in his vision as his heartbeat started to race. He was about to scream for help, when a gruff hand grabbed his throat and squeezed down on his windpipe, a pitiful choke the only sound being emitted. It was so dark, he could barely see anything. The hand that was holding his arm still moved to grab the front of his coat and keep him there. Jack immediately tried to pry the fingers off of his throat, but it seemed useless- it was like trying to remove metal clamps. Jack's eyes started to well up with tears, spilling over his cheeks. _This is it,_ he thought. _I'm going to die here._ The person suddenly leaned over and bit Jack on the shoulder, and Jack tensed his muscles and tried to kick the figure off of him with all his might. He couldn't scream or yell in agony like he badly wanted to, as this random hobo tore the parts of his clavicle and shoulder blade to pieces. 

With a surge of adrenaline, Jack kicked his attacker in the chest as hard as he could, departing his mouth from his trapezius and ran like hell. He didn't care that his shirt and coat was stained with blood, all he could think was to escape. His vision was blurry from tears and he accidentally dropped his wallet, but none of that mattered as he ran down the alley way and towards his apartment door.  _Run. Run. Run. Run!_ The same word kept pounding into his brain as his muscles started to burn from the exhaustion. 

Jack fumbled for his keys and, while shaking violently, opened the door to his flat and slammed it shut. He didn't know if his attacker followed him, but the blood loss was starting to making his head foggy. 

"Jack?" a voice called from one of the rooms, as one of his roommates, Robin, came into view. "I've been calling you for an hour now, where the hell- oh my god." His friend went three shades paler as he ran over to Jack, grabbing a rag from the kitchen and pressing it into the wound. Jack let out a hiss, and made a feeble attempt to push him away. 

"F-Fuck off, I'm fine!" He reassured unconvincingly, using the door behind him to help him stand up. 

"What the fucking hell happened to you?!"

"Some homeless man bit me, it doesn't matter."

"Sean, this looks like a dog bit you. We gotta get you to a hospital-"

"Hell no, I don't have insurance in this country!"

"You're _bleeding,_ you jackass! There's a chunk of you fucking missing!"

"I am NOT going to give my parents a €90,000 hospital bill just because I was a pussy."

"At least let me wrap it up and put my nursing major to use."

"Fine."

He proceeded to grab the gauze out of his hospital bag and disinfect the bite wound as much as he could. 

"Ow, fuckin' bitch, that hurts!"

"No shit it hurts, it's rubbing alcohol. But you'll thank me later when your arm doesn't fall off."

He wrapped his shoulder tightly and taped the gauze down to keep it in place. Robin's gloves were stained crimson, and he threw them into the garbage bin with disgust. The kitchen that they shared looked like a massacre. "Jesus, dude. How are you not freaking out right now?" 

Jack rubbed his eyes and took off his shirt. "I don't know. Maybe the adrenaline helped a bit." He sighed, trying to get a good look at the ball of dressings that Robin had encased his flesh wound. It looked relatively stable. "Thanks. You saved me from a hospital visit." 

"To be honest, you still need one. But I can't force you to do anything." Robin gave him a look of concern, but gave him a sign of defeat. "Wake me up in two hours so I can change those."

"I can do it, just toss me the gauze." 

Robin looked like he was about to object, but gave up halfway and tossed him the roll of dressings. "If you can't do it, please wake me up man. It would look really bad if you died on my watch."

"Oh, you would look bad? I'd be dead!" Jack laughed, giving him a small push. Robin chuckled, rolling his eyes. 

"You know what I mean. Yell if you need anything." 

"Jeez, I get it, mom." Jack made his way to his bedroom and shut the door, removing his clothes and changing into his pjs. It hurt to try and reach his arm up to pull off his shirt, but he managed to do so anyway. A small tin of Ibuprofen was shaken and two pills were tossed down his throat dry, in hopes to take away the burn and ache that went from his neck all the way down his left arm. He laid down on his simple bed, sleep crashing over him in waves.

Fearing for your life is exhausting. 

 

 


	2. Eruption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something's wrong with Jack.

Jack woke up in a cold sweat, clutching his grey t-shirt and panting heavily.Visions of spiders of all shapes and sizes were crawling into him through his bite mark, waking him up and almost causing him to fall out of bed. "Nightmare." he muttered quietly, voice shaking and unstable. He let go of his chest once he realized he had grabbed onto it, and looked over to see the bright red digital numbers of his alarm clock bearing the time 3:42 AM. _Only four hours?_ He thought to himself, swinging his legs over the side and grabbing the ball of gauze to change his dressings, Robin's nagging voice reminding him that he needed to change them every two hours.

He made his way to the bathroom and ditched his nasty shirt, which was essentially drenched in perspiration. A look in the mirror told him that he was revolting. His shock of dark green hair had been matted to his forehead via sweat, and his skin looked paler than paper (which was a stretch, considering that he already looked paler than paper). Dark circles had made themselves present underneath his eyes. Jack considered the idea of taking a shower, but didn't want to take the chance of falling asleep and accidentally drowning. That was for morning Jack to take care of. 

He ripped off the gauze, unwrapping it and cringing at the smell of dried blood and sweat. Grabbing a cloth of a towel rack, he wet it and began to wipe away all the crusted red away to make things easier to see. With every swipe and swab of the wet towel, his confusion began to rise more and more. 

"No way," he mumbled, voice quiet with disbelief.

The teeth marks were thinner, unlike how they were when he originally got them. They were wide and gaping, reminiscent of how Jack had kicked his attacker away and ripping the flesh more than it already was. It wasn't red and swollen anymore, which was unnerving, and it looked like he had had the wound for 4 weeks rather than 4 hours. Jack stood there in awe and fear, unsure of how it could have possibly healed so quickly in the span of four hours. He thought Robin was going to have to suture it up for him to avoid going to the hospital.  _Maybe I'm just tired,_ he thought to himself. _It's 4 AM and I could either be incredibly sleep deprived or hallucinating. Or Maybe that dude drugged me with his mouth._ This explanation was good enough for him, and he proceeded to wrap it back up in dressings with the same intensity as before, and then promptly went back to bed. Too much had happened and he just didn't feel like dealing with it right now. 

-

Jack rose to the sunlight pouring in through his window, and groaned with irritation. A pillow was snatched from the other side of his bed and used to block the sunlight that was rudely interrupting his sleep, until he felt a burning pain on his arm with which the sunlight was touching. He ignored it until it became too painful to handle, and he scampered out of the light and onto a place on his bed where the sunlight didn't reach. 

"Ow, shit!" He hissed, holding his arm and looking down at it for signs of sunburn. There weren't, but it still hurt. He knew he was white as all shit, but this was ridiculous. Never had he been so sensitive to the sun that even just a few seconds standing in it fucking sucked. "I must be getting sick or some shit.." He grumbled, half asleep and walking over to the bathroom. 

He tore off the bandages once again, and tossed them into the garbage. The shower turned on and slowly became hotter and hotter, to the point where it was mildly scalding, just as he liked it. Jack stepped into the welcoming warmth of the hot water washing away the sweat that had solidified itself on his skin and the blood that had seeped down his chest and back. 

In the middle of washing his hair, his back brushed against the shower wall and he expected some sort of painful reaction, yet received none. He opened his eyes in wonder and confusion as he looked in the small, foggy mirror that was hanging from his shower head and gasped: the wound was gone. 

He felt his shoulder, looking for any signs of some kind of injury, but there was nothing. It was like he had never even got it. His stomach twisted with fear as the fact settled into him more and more. Thoughts raced through his head, doing back flips and relays as the uneasiness crawled it's way up his throat.

  _A gash like that can't just heal in 8 hours._

_Did I just imagine the encounter?_

_That's impossible, Robin saw it too._

He jumped out of the shower once he had gotten all the soap off of him and looked in the bigger mirror above his porcelain sink. He wasn't imagining things; there really was no mark on his shoulder. Not even a faint scar. 

After he had dried off, he threw some clothes on and re-wrapped his shoulder just so Robin wouldn't see. He was freaking out enough, he didn't need his roommate to be panicking as well. On the upside, he was pretty sure Robin was cooking something before he went to work and the smell was making his mouth water. 

Jack left his room and was welcomed with the more intense smell of eggs and bacon sizzling on the frying pan. 

"Well, you're looking much better." Robin observed, using a spatula to take some sunny-side up eggs off the pan. "I was expecting for you to yell for me in the middle of the night." 

"Nah, I got things covered." Jack reassured, while on the inside he felt like he was dying from confusion and fear. "It wasn't that hard to figure out. What'cha makin'?" 

"Breakfast. And I'm glad you woke up because I made too much and I have to leave for work soon." Robin shoved a piece of bacon into his mouth, barely leaving enough room to chew. "Call yours, and tell them you won't be in today since you got mauled."

"What? I can totally go to work-"

"Do NOT make me be your overprotective girlfriend right now."

"Alright, alright! Sheesh." 

Robin sighed, grabbing his car keys and coat off of a chair. "Call me if something happens. And if I can't fix it, you are going to a hospital."

"Oh, fuck you." 

"Shut up, you're not dying on me just because you're too proud to ask your parents for money!" He opened the door leading to the apartment complex, and glared at Jack for a good few seconds. "Promise you'll call me?"

"Oh my god, I promise, now will you fucking leave?! You're gonna be late." 

"Love you too, Jack." He snickered, blowing him a mock kiss and closing the door behind him. 

He rolled his eyes in annoyance, going over to grab himself a plate. He loaded it with eggs and bacon, sitting down and taking a fork to it, shoving it in his mouth like it was the last thing he would ever eat. 

It tasted... Off. Like it was eggs, but eggs that had gone bad or something. It wasn't particularly bad, but it didn't taste good either. He shrugged it off and continued eating. 

Until his stomach curled up and panged with pain. 

Sean dropped his plate, smashing the ceramic and spilling food everywhere as he held his stomach in agony, which felt like it was twisting in on itself and was trying to eject itself out of his body alien style. He bolted to the bathroom and spilled what little food he had consumed from his stomach to the toilet bowl, shaking and shivering with disgust. 

He wiped his mouth with his arm and flushed the toilet, leaning against the tub wall and holding himself still from shaking. 

_What the fucking hell is wrong with me?_

 


	3. Robin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nurse knows more about medical shit then you do, but even they have a limit.

Jack lay awake in his bedroom, letting the TV stay on for white noise for the rest of the day after the egg and bacon incident. He was too afraid to try and eat anything, out of fear that he would just throw it back up. That fear didn't stop his stomach from whining in protest. After a few hours had passed, Robin had returned from his internship at the hospital and came back looking tired, but pleased with himself. Starving since the hospital cafeteria contained nothing but garbage, he went into the kitchen to quickly fix up a bowl of mac n cheese, and was promptly stopped by the mess that was strewn about: egg and bacon mixed with ceramic plate.

"Jack?" He called, throwing his coat on the couch and beginning to clean up the food that was left there. "What happened? And more importantly, why didn't you clean it up?" He grumbled lowly, tossing some food bits and shards of plate into the trash can with a **thunk**.

Jack slowly exited his room, his hunger making feel weak and feeble. "S-Sorry, dude. I'm really not feeling well today." He was still dressed in his pjs, wrapped up in his comforter. "Did you turn on the AC or something? It's fucking freezing." His teeth chattered audibly, which if everything else didn't spike Robin's curiosity certainly raised an eyebrow.

"Dude, you look horrible. Did you eat anything today?" He felt his forehead, the lines in his forehead deepening. "You feel hot. Maybe you're coming down with something. I'll get some stuff for you after I finish cleaning up your mess." Jack felt a pang of guilt as he watched his friend pick up the bacon bits and plate shards, but he was certain that if he tried to lean down and help, he would fall over and smash his head into the floor.

Robin hissed, yanking his hand away from the floor and dropping the shard he was holding. "Shit," he muttered, blood seeping out of a brand new cut on his index finger. "I wasn't paying attention." He stuck the finger into his mouth to help coagulate the blood, and got up to find himself a band-aid in one of the drawers.

Jack's vision went tunneled. 

All of a sudden he could hear Robin's steady and slow heartbeat, and he could hear the blood rushing through his veins and arteries. His stomach screamed for food, begging him to go after whatever smelled so enticing and wonderful. His mouth began to water uncontrollably and he couldn't think about anything else but how hungry he was. 

"..ack? Jack. Jack." He came back to reality with Robin snapping his fingers and waving his hand in front of his obviously dazed face. 

"Huh? Sorry, tuned out for a bit." Jack bit down on his tongue to suppress whatever primal instinct had reared its ugly head out of hiding.

"Man, maybe that dude who bit you was taking some kind of pill and drugged the shit out of you because there is something going on with you." He ripped off the band-aid wrapper with his teeth, and promptly covered his cut in a uniform fashion. "I should really get you checked out-"

"What the hell did I say?! I can't pay for that!"

"Dude, calm down. I'll just ask one of my friends to come by and take a look at you." 

"And they won't send my mum an asston of bills?"

"Not a single one."

"Fine. But if he asks me to squat and cough I'm out."

"You're such a bitch."

-

Robin called his friend over to diagnose or at least estimate whatever the hell was wrong with Jack the next morning. He couldn't sleep that night; the need for food becoming more and more intense with each passing second to the point where he felt like death would be a more possible solution to this than anything else. 

Jack was sitting on the couch wrapped in a duvet when Robin opened the door and welcomed one of his colleagues in, a young doctor by the name of Felix. He was blonde and relatively of the same height, with a friendly smile and similarly blue eyes. Jack really hoped this dude wouldn't make him squat and cough, because he looked and sounded like a cool guy. Maybe if he doesn't die he'll go get a drink with him some time. 

Felix walked over to Jack and pulled a flashlight out of his bag. He waved the light back and forth between his eye's, a look of concern becoming more and more evident on his face. 

"Open your mouth and say aah." The flashlight was shined down Jack's throat, light reflecting off of his uvula and illuminating all the silver caps that he had had filled in when he was kid. "Are you addicted to drugs or alcohol or anything?"

Jack shook his head, closing his mouth as Felix put the flashlight away. "I like my coffee, but I think I can live without it. Why?" 

"Because what it looks like is the same symptoms someone with a previous alcohol dependency would have." Felix turned to Robin to affirm Jack's claim, and Robin nodded with confusion. "Jack's Irish and he doesn't even drink like one, I would completely notice if he did. This apartment isn't that big." 

"That's fucking racist." Jack gave a weak chuckle, before falling into a coughing fit. He wiped the saliva that had dribbled out of his mouth with his sleeve and shuddered. 

"And this happened after you were attacked by some random homeless dude?" 

"Basically." Robin nodded from behind the other two with confirmation.

"Can I see it?"

Jack panicked. The wound wasn't there anymore- he had checked dozens and dozens of times throughout the night and no amount of looking and relooking would bring back the fleshy injury he had procured two nights ago. "I don't think that's a good idea." His voice was shaking from nervousness, but he hoped they would take it just as illness. "It's pretty nasty looking. You're no surgeon, you'll probably pass out at the looks of it."

Felix rolled his eyes. "I'm in school to be an M.D. There is nothing that I haven't seen before." He reached over to pull the blanket off of him, to which Jack recoiled with such a reaction that it froze Felix in his tracks. 

"I'm sorry, I-I just don't want anyone touching it. It hurts enough as it is." He hoped that Robin couldn't see through his blatant lie, as he locked eyes with the doctor, making the atmosphere uncomfortable and dense. 

"Alright. If you truly don't want me to look at it." Felix receded and packed up all the tools he had used. He and Robin talked for a while and Jack overheard the conversation, even though that the other two had thought he passed out on the couch. His hearing was surprisingly clear, as the men exchanged concerns in hushed whispers:

"Why is he being so weird about it?"

"Maybe he's traumatized or some shit. When I saw it it looked disgusting."

"Huh. That bad, eh?"

"Oh man, his coat and shirt are going to be stained red until he dies."

"That could very well be tomorrow. The dude looks like he's out of his 2nd class of alcoholics anonymous."

"I'm telling ya, he's as straight edge as you could possibly get. I've seen him drunk once in the 3 years I've known him, and he's a college student. And IRISH."

"I think you've made your stereotypical point."

"Whatever. Can you prescribe him drugs? To make him not vomit or some shit?"

"I'll see what I can do." 

Robin gave Felix his thanks and farewells and shut the door behind him. 

 


	4. Sabbat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite what Merriam-Webster will tell you, sabbat does not mean any of eight neo-pagan religious festivals commemorating phases of the changing seasons.

A bowl of chicken soup and some honey-lemon tea were sitting on a table, both barely touched. A TV was blasting the same old reruns, but it didn't serve the purpose for entertainment, but to drown out the silence. The recipient had tried his best to consume the soup, but no matter how hard he tried it always ended up inside of a bucket that he had kept nearby. The honey-lemon tea was safer, but one sip too large could end up in the bucket as well too. 

Robin had gone to bed early. He threw Jack some fever medicine and told him to wake him up if he got too sick or thought he needed to go to a hospital. Jack wouldn't wake him up. At this point, his throat hurt from all the stomach acid too bad to yell for him. All that he could do was his stomach's impatient growling and moaning for anything with substance. 

Jack swung the large comforter off of him and grabbed his coat. He needed some fresh air, he needed something to clear his airways and his brain. Lately, it feels like he's been observing everyday life in a fog. He shoved his arms into his black parka and left the apartment, making sure to close the door quietly so he wouldn't wake Robin and give him anymore reason to worry about him.  _Jeez. He really is like my overprotective girlfriend._ A passing thought fleeted through Jack's head as he went down the stairs and opened the apartment complex's glass double doors. 

He hadn't gone outside for two straight days, and he was almost expecting the world to have changed drastically in that time. The night was still dimly lit by the lights that were stacked along the streets, but something was different. His breath didn't form little clouds as it left his mouth, and his fingertips were perfectly fine: completely unaffected by the November air. The air was supposed to bite and nip at him, cold turning his nose red and his fingers blue with frostbite. He didn't feel warm, but he certainly wasn't cold.

He stepped into a coffee shop that was open late, connecting the logic that if he can have tea, he can probably have coffee. He was welcomed by the flush of air being blown towards the door, which should have felt warm, and didn't. Whatever was making him sick, he hoped that he got over this soon. 

He handed over some change and received a dark roast in a grande, sipping it gingerly as if it were dynamite. He missed coffee. The smooth taste of bitter black made him feel normal: like he hasn't been throwing up and worrying about wounds that weren't there for the past two days. 

"Ouch, shit!" A barista from behind the counter yelped in pain as they sliced their finger on one of the coffee grinder's blades. "Marisa, clean out that grinder, I got cut by it." A colleague nodded as she grabbed a washcloth and began to run the blades underneath the sink as the barista ran to the back to go get the first aid kit. 

Jack could feel his hunger curl in desperation. 

His brain was screaming to go after what smelled so **_damn good_.**

He squeezed his coffee cup so hard that it broke and it spilled all over the table he was sitting at and his hand (which STILL didn't feel anything but his now wet coat sleeve).

Strangers began staring at him, confusion clearly on their faces. _What the hell is up with him?_ Their facial expressions read, and he could feel his face heating up with self-consciousness. 

Everything was becoming too much. The strangers, his unending starvation, and the fact that there was something in the vicinity that smelled like heaven above, he had to get out. Now. 

Jack apologized hastily as he pushed through people and stumbled outside, his eyesight clouded, nose filled with the smell of coffee and food, gasping for air. 

Leaning against the side of the building, he tried to catch his breath, heart beat racing and the blood rushing to his head; he felt like throwing up. 

The barista was outside too, smoking a cigarette. He could smell the smoke and could hear the blood that was still seeping out of his thumb; but was wrapped in a plaster so that it didn't get everywhere. 

Jack went blind for a second. 

 The barista knitted his eyebrows in confusion, dropping his cigarette onto the pavement and smashing it out with the sole of his boot. "Oi mate, what ya want?" He asked gruffly, folding his arms across his chest in case this wanker tried to attack him or some shit. "Ya wanna take a pictyure?" 

Jack lunged out of the dark and sunk his teeth into the jugular of the cigarette addicted barista. 

His eyes had clouded over black, and his canines had somehow extended into sharp incisors, cutting the skin on the barista's neck easily. Blood gushed out freely and generously, and was promptly followed by disgusting slurping sounds and his grip on his victim's shirt becoming tighter and tighter. The coffee maker was too shocked to make a noise, and even if he tried he could feel the guy's teeth sinking into his veins more and more. Jack's adams apple bobbed up and down as he drank desperately and hungrily from the poor man, until he realized that there was nothing left. He threw his body onto the pavement of the coffee shop parking lot, breathing heavily and licking his lips with satisfaction. 

It took a while before what he just did registered. 


	5. Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Panic in the streets of Boston, panic in the streets of Birmingham

_thump thump_

_thump thump thump **CRASH**_

Robin was awoken to the unceremonious sounds of his front door being slammed open.

He ran out of his bedroom as fast as he could to see his flat mate, who's mouth was a mess of some sickly dark red liquid and his shirt was of an equal caliber. He could feel the blood draining out of his face, coming up with nothing as a response.

"Robin!" Jack's hoarse and gurgling voice echoed off of the apartment walls. "Robin, I'm freaking the f-fuck out man!" His coat was thrown onto a stray chair and he looked down at his hands, which also happened to be covered in crimson. "T-There was this barista, and and he was bleeding, and I t-tried to get some f-fresh air.."

"Dude, dude! Slow down, you're gonna freak me out too, not that I'm not already panicking." He tried to think clearly: what did he need first? Robin ran into the bathroom to grab every single medical kit they had in their cabinets along with a few wash cloths from the kitchen.

Jack sat down somewhere, shivering from fear and disgust. He could hear the guy's heartbeat grow slower and slower until it shuddered to a stop. As bad as he wanted to let the poor man go, he couldn't.He was almost halfway tempted to shove his fingers down his throat and make himself vomit, except for the first time in two whole days his stomach didn't feel completely empty. 

His friend leaned down and ripped off the patch that had originally kept his 'bite mark' from seeing the airs of infection, only to find nothing there. He stopped, blinking a few times, just in case he was wildly hallucinating. 

"W...What?" He said bewildering, stepping away from Sean. "That's.. That's impossible. I saw it, you were bleeding. You were DRENCHED." Rubbing his eyes served no help in making the fleshy wound reappear. "Am I being punk'd or some shit?!"

"No, you asshat! I've been dealing with this for like, three days!" Jack tore the gauze and medical tape off of his trapezius muscle and gestured to his stained clothes of hemoglobin. "There's something wrong with me, and I don't know what the hell that is!"

"Your symptoms, repeat them back to me." Robin made a winding motion with his hands as he paced back and forth from the apartment. 

"Uh, I throw up everything I eat, uhm, I can't take sunlight because it burns, it hurts to be around blood-"

"Now I KNOW you're just pranking me, you head ass. You sound like a fucking vampire." Robin was fuming, some kitchen scissors in one hand to cut the gauze and his other hand balled up into a fist. "If this is some ELABORATE FUCKING PRANK, I am going to take these and shove them into your dick hole."

"I swear I'm not lying! You've seen the bite mark, why is it not there anymore?!"

"Because, because, I don't fucking know!" Robin struggled to find the proper words as he was waving the scissors around, his gestures becoming wider the more hysterical he got.

"Would you put those damn things down? You're gonna hurt yourself!" Jack reached over and tried to grab for the handle of the scissors. 

In a quick movement, Robin yanked the scissors away from his grasp, but then proceeded to give himself a sizable cut on his palm. He let out a yell, dropping the scissors onto the floor with a clatter along with a few drops of blood. "Ow, Jesus fuck!"

Jack could feel his stomach turn with hunger all over again as if he was a starving child on the streets of Manhattan.

His pupils dilated with need and his nose was filled with the smell of iron, and he began walking backwards and away from Robin. "G... Get away from me." His voice was low and dangerous, a hand reached up to cover his mouth, his teeth feeling like they were so much larger than they actually were. 

"The hell is wrong with you?" Robin ignored his warnings and walked toward Jack with confusion and hurt on his face. "Dude, just stop. I know it's some elaborate prank or some shit." His hand was leaving a trail of blood on the floor as he continued to walk closer and closer to him. 

"Robin if you don't get the hell away from me right now, something bad is going to happen!" He continued to hold his hand over his mouth, making his words slightly muffled and distorted. His mouth felt like it couldn't be held shut, everything inside his body was begging him to go after the scent, and then Jack hit the back of the wall and couldn't back away any further. 

"Something bad? Now you're just being dramat-"

Robin was tackled to the floor before he could finish his sentence: the hand that was holding back a ferocious animal was taken away, as Jack's pitch black eyes stared into Robin's poor, defenseless soul. His teeth were sharper than the kitchen cleavers that had sliced Robin's hand open. He had Robin pinned on the ground, his hands keeping an iron grip on his wrists and was hissing like a snake. His throat was ripe for the picking.

_drink drink drink drink DRINK **DRINK**_

Robin could feel his heart thrumming in his throat. He was looking at one of his best mates, being inhabited by some foul creature and that creature was threatening to rip his fleshy body into shreds. As bad as he wanted to scream, no sounds came out of his mouth and he was left staring into the soulless eyes of a demon. 

There was a war being fought in Jack's head, and he wasn't sure who would win. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if anyone has been waiting for me to post the next chapter i still love u


	6. Ridges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack gets help from an unlikely ally.

"J-Jack, Jack wait! Please don't, it's me!" Robin was pinned to the hardwood floor by his wrists by what appeared to be his flatmate, except with really fucking sharp teeth and a never ending abyss of black inside his eyes. Not-Jack was breathing heavily and giving him a sickly grin, his nails digging into Robin's wrists more and more as the cut on his hand leaked out blood. "Dude I-I'm sorry for doubting you, p-please don't kill me!" Robin had closed his eyes a while ago, fearful tears sliding down the side of his face as his friend's mouth got closer and closer to his neck, and he could feel his hot breath sending chills down his spine.  

Robin felt the weight on top of him be taken away in an instant, and an animal-esque groan come from the opposite side of the room. He opened his eyes slowly, to see a man: a man with equally black eyes, a flurry of red hair with his natural color on the sides, and Jack in his grasp, grabbing him by the shirt and holding him still. Robin had never seen him before in his entire life. 

"Will you calm the fuck down?!" The man scolded, throwing Jack onto the floor. "God, it's like you haven't eaten in years!" He bit into his wrist, blood dribbling down his fingertips and onto the floor, and shoved it in Jack's mouth. "Drink, you goddamn lunatic."

Jack immediately took to sucking the living daylights out of the man's wrist, drinking like he hadn't tasted water in forever. He could feel the emptiness being pushed away, and he didn't want the feeling to end. He grabbed onto the man's arm like a leech, preventing the stranger from taking it away from him anytime soon.

After a while, he yanked his wrist away from Jack's teeth, and Jack gave a small whimper at the loss. As the slight craze began to fade, he realized that there was a random stranger standing in his living room, and that that exact stranger had just given him his wrist to chomp on. "Who the fuck are you?" He asked, wiping the stray blood away with his sleeve. 

Robin nodded, holding his hand and shivering violently, pale as a ghost. "And w-what did you do to him?" He couldn't stop the words from getting stuck on his tongue and in between his teeth, as he scooted away from both of them until his back was against a wall. 

"What did I do to him?" The man said incredulously, smiling a rather sinister and toothy grin. "I made sure he didn't rip your throat open and drain all the blood out of you." He kneeled down and grabbed Robin by the shirt, raising him so that their noses were almost touching. "So if I were you," His voice had dropped to dangerously quiet whisper, "I would be kissing my ass right about now."

"Put him down!" Jack got up off the floor and bolted towards the stranger, eyes dark again with anger. He was about to lay a blow on the man's head when his other hand reached out faster than he could register and grabbed him by the throat, squeezing down on his windpipe, but not enough to knock him out. Only enough to hurt.

Jack immediately knew who the stranger was. 

 

"It's y-you!" Jack choked out, clawing at the dude's fingers and trying to pry his hand off of him. His new found teeth emerged out of his gums and tried to fight back, but due to his lack of control they proved to be useless. This time it was different; he could see the little details on his attacker's face: the tanned skin, he had a strong nose and brown eyes, freckles here and there. His eyes hid behind some rectangle frames, sitting on his ears. 

The attacker smiled again; he loved the look that Jack had on his face when he realized who he was. "Sorry about a few days ago." He didn't sound very sorry at all. "I couldn't.. Help myself." He let Jack and Robin go slowly and backed away from the two, putting his hands up to show that he wasn't going to cause anymore trouble. "But I can't have you killing people left and right. Not good for the rest of us."

Jack was rubbing his neck and coughing into his sweater, looking at Robin, who was paler than milk and shaking like a leaf. "I'm going to ask again. Who. The fuck. Are you." His voice was hoarse and ragged from being strangled half to death. "Because I don't know if you're friend or foe."

"A mix of the two, perhaps." Mark laughed lowly, folding his arms across his chest. "My name is Mark. I just saved your friend's life. I believe a thank you is in order."

"You don't get fucking SHIT if you're the reason why I've been throwing up everything I eat for the past two and a half days." Jack felt himself getting progressively more and more angry, his hands balling up into fists. "I hurt someone, real bad. They didn't deserve it. He was just some random coffee barista and I hurt him because he was there." He shook his head and turned around to head back into his room. "I want you to leave, and to never come back."

"That's not a very good idea-"

"Why fucking NOT?!" Jack yelled, turning around and staring Mark down with his pitch black eyes. "You come into my FLAT, you toss me into my own FUCKING WALL, you infect me with SOME BULLSHIT DISEASE, I don't see why you should stay here and give me some fucking rant about how I should thank you! Now GET. THE HELL. OUT." Mark stood there emotionless, completely unaffected by Jack's ranting. He rolled his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

"As much as I would love to leave and never see you again for the rest of your miserable life, you're my responsibility. And if you do something stupid, it's my ass whose going to get the beating."

"YOUR responsibility?! I'm not a fucking child!"

"You kind of are, filthy newborn!"

"Newborn?! What the hell are you going on about?"

"You're a newborn, you don't know how to handle or control yourself!"

"Newborn what?!"

"Vampire!"


	7. "Vampire"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm sorry, what?"

Jack stood there, rather dumbfounded. The word bounced around in his head, and no matter how he tried to make sense of it, he came up with nothing but fairy tales and ghost stories.

_Vampire._

_Vampire._

_Vampire._

_What the fuck?_

"Hello?" Mark's deep voice pulled him out of his fog. He was looking at Jack rather curiously, and snapped his fingers once to try and get his attention. "Is anyone in there?" Jack waited a few seconds before addressing him. 

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Cold ones. Blood suckers. Night walkers. Y'know, vampires." Mark said the word like it was a passing conversation, which Jack couldn't wrap his head around. 

"And you're saying I'm one?"

"I would be really surprised if you weren't, considering I'm the one that did it."

"You're batshit crazy."

"Am I, though?" 

Jack leaned against his couch for support, just in case he fainted and hit his head on the floor. Maybe he did hit his head, because this couldn't possibly be real. 

"If you're not crazy than I'm crazy."

"No, not that either."

"Shut up, asshole."

"Your entire body hurts if you're in the same room as someone with a paper cut. That's not a coincidence."

"I said shut up."

"You can't consume anything except for a few liquids-"

"Shut the fuck up!"

"Even though it doesn't look like it, you get burnt by a Boston winter sun. Even you know that you aren't THAT pale."

"WHAT on this GODFORSAKEN EARTH will get you to stop talking?!" Jack's eyes were tied shut, tears threatening to fall down his face in a mix of fear, confusion and anger. He looked up at Robin, who was still backed up against a wall, hoping he would say something, ANYTHING, to prove this guy wrong. Robin simply looked back and shook his head. He knew all of his symptoms, to a T. It was too bizarre to just ignore. 

"You're still bothered by the fact that Robin has an open wound on his hand, even though it stopped bleeding a while ago."

Jack grabbed his coffee table by the edge and tossed it into a wall, the glass shattering into a million pieces and creating a rather large crack in the dry wall. 

"Fine, you're right! I haven't eaten anything but coffee and tea in the past few days, the smell of Robin is driving me fucking INSANE, when I woke up the morning after the sun felt like I was an ant being melted by a magnifying glass but there was nothing to show for it, and I've been begging for everything to end because I can't _live_ like this!" By the end of his mini rant, Jack was crying and the words had gotten lost in a stutter and some voice cracks, and his chest was rising up and down in a frantic fashion, and Mark didn't look like he was being sarcastic and mocking anymore. 

"I'm sorry to tell you, but it's not going to end." The joking demeanor had left Mark's voice like a ghost.

Jack remained silent. Anything he tried to say, wouldn't come out. The words got jumbled in his head and stuck in his throat, choking him similar to how Mark did during their first encounter. Only enough to hurt. 

"I-I don't know w-what to do." His instincts were telling him to go after Robin, suck him dry and leave him bloodless and dead, but everything in his head was yelling not to. "I-I'm so damn hungry, a-and, the worst p-part is it never ends." 

"Yes it does, you just gotta grow up a little. After the first decade or so, it doesn't hurt so bad." Mark was terrible at being reassuring. 

"Decades..?"

"I'm 89 years old."

"Holy fuck." 

"Yeah. People older than me have a better grip on it than I do." 

"You look like you're in your 20's." 

"That happens." 

"Is it an Asian thing?" 

"Vaguely racist and complimenting, but no." 

"Am I gonna look like this forever?" 

"Until you die, yeah." 

"Do I die?"

"Not by natural causes. Or by knives/bullets, for that matter."

"Then from what?"

"Think stereotypical. Stakes, being in the sun for too long, y'know the drill." 

"What about garlic, and shit?" 

"It's just gross. Doesn't hurt or anything, it's just nasty." 

"Oh." 

"How do you feel?"

"I'm upset as shit, but calm."

"Better than before." 

"Does that mean you won't kill me?" Robin's voice chimed into the conversation, drawing the attention of both Jack and Mark. 

Jack gave a sigh of defeat. "I promise I won't." 

"I promise to stop him." Mark gave a small nod, and with that final note, Robin got up and began to head to his room.

"I'll see you guys when I'm not being hunted down like a deer." 

Jack rubbed his tired eyes, looking over at Mark. "Why are you helping me?"

Mark shifted his weight between his two feet, uncomfortably scratching his neck. "I... I didn't mean to do this to you." 

He scoffed in response. "Gee, thanks." 

"Believe me, I know it literally means nothing." Mark added hastily, avoiding eye contact. "I hadn't eaten in weeks. You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time." 

"That still doesn't change the fact that I'm stuck like this." 

"No, but I can help you." 

Jack scoffed again. "I'm not sure if I want you to help me." 

"Name one other vampire who can help you control yourself. Exactly." 

"You didn't give me a chance to respond!" 

"You don't know any other vampires, shut up." 

"Fine." 

"I'll come back tomorrow." Mark offered a hand to Jack, who took it reluctantly. "I don't know much, but I know more than you, and that's a lot considering your position." 

"Idiot, you're the reason for all this." 

"And I'll be damned if I don't at least attempt to fix it." Mark walked towards the exit, pushing his rectangular frames up his nose. "Don't kill anyone, alright?" 

"Just get out." 

Mark snickered, shutting the door behind him. 


	8. Robin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to address the elephant in the room.

The door shut behind Mark with a thud and Jack collapsed into his overused recliner; pinching the bridge of his nose as his oncoming headache raged war on the insides of his skull. His heart was vibrating in his chest, and he just kept replaying what mark said to him just to get a grasp on this harsh new reality that was now a part of him. 

_It's not going to end._

Robin peeked out of his bedroom, still afraid after what he experienced. Who was Jack? His friend? A killer? He had known him for years, but now everything about him felt foreign and unfamiliar. 

"I know you're watching me," Jack called out, not raising his head. "Are you afraid of me now? See me in a different light?"

"I mean yeah." Robin snorted, coming out of his room fully and leaning against the door frame. "You were about to rip by fucking throat out with your teeth." 

"I-I'm sorry." Jack turned to face him, his eyes watery and filled with guilt. "I don't want to hurt you."

"It looks like you can't help it if you do." Robin stated matter-of-factly, looking down at the hand that he cut. "How bad does this bother you?"

Jack bit his bottom lip and averted his eyes. "Right now, it's more of an alarm clock going off in the background. Before.. HE showed up," Jack paused, "It hurt to be around."

"Oh." 

The guilt was eating him up on the inside. "If I could have fended for myself that night, I would-"

"Don't feel bad." 

He turned back to face Robin, this time with a quizzical look on his face. "Why the hell not? I almost hurt you. I almost-" He couldn't bring himself to say it. "I should feel bad. I deserve everything that I get." 

"He's way too strong." Robin walked over to the kitchen, mindlessly pouring himself a cup of coffee from this morning. "You couldn't have done anything even if you tried. Want one?"

Jack nodded once, and Robin grabbed another mug from the cabinet. "I needed someone else to intervene. That's not normal!" 

"This entire situation isn't normal." Robin snickered, walking over to Jack and handing him the coffee. "And if I'm going to live with a vampire, I might as well save my ass and help you out." 

Jack sipped his coffee. "How on earth would you do that?" 

Robin sighed, putting his damaged hand into his mouth and biting down, breaking the skin easily, grimacing in pain. 

Jack froze, and immediately started to move away. "Whatever you're doing, stop it right now." 

"Calm down," Robin held his hand over Jack's coffee mug and let some blood run down his palm and into his cup, creating little ripples in the black liquid. "Tell me if it helps." 

Jack's senses were on fire, his nerves on end at the sudden smell of food, and Mark basically giving him his arm as food felt like a drop in the bucket compared to right now. "Robin, y-you're walking on a minefield right now." He took a sip of his coffee and _damn_ , it tasted like absolute heaven. 

"Better?" 

"Better." He still sipped it gingerly since it was 99% coffee. "Why on earth would you do that and risk me hurting you again?"

"I notice a trend." Robin leaned back on the couch and put his hand's behind his head. "Every time you actually drink it instead of just smelling it, you calm down. It's the most logical thing to do."

"I could have attacked you again." 

"I knew you wouldn't, last time I provoked you."

"Don't you dare blame that on yourself."

"You did tell me to stay away."

"Shut the fuck up, Robin." 

Robin snickered again, and wrapped his hand back up in gauze that he grabbed from earlier. "You won't be alone in this y'know."

"I'm really grateful for that." Jack drained the last of his coffee, his adams apple bobbing up and down and then promptly wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve. "Do you trust him?"

"Mark? Not in the slightest."

"Neither do I, but he's the only help that I have right now." His headache was coming back at the thought of that asshole showing up again.

"Did you see his arm after you bit it?"

Jack shook his head. "No, what about it?"

"I watched that bite mark heal before my very eyes. It was creepy; the skin was merging back together like a cell." Robin shuddered, his cup of coffee spilling over a bit. "Like something you'd see under a microscope."

"That is freaky." Jack laughed to himself quietly, looking at Robin's gauze covered hand. "Thank you for not hating me."

Robin shrugged. "Like he said, you're still new. I can't hold you completely accountable." He got off the couch and yawned, walking back over to his bedroom. "This time I really am going to sleep. If something happens, yell."

"Night, Robin."

"Night."

-

Robin was awoken the next morning by a loud and boisterous voice meandering around his apartment. He wrapped a blanket around his cold body and walked out into the living room, where Jack was back against a wall and covering up his nose and mouth.

"For the love of God, get that fucking shit AWAY from me!" Jack yelled, as Robin looked over to see Mark holding some dead animal in his hand. "That's fucking disgusting!"

"Look," Mark gestured compliance with his hands and body language, "It's not filet mignon, but it's a start. You wanna know how to not hurt innocent people? You start at the bottom." He raised up the obvious roadkill and showed it off. "Like possums."

Robin covered his nose at the rancid smell of a day old possum corpse. "Did you have to bring that into my goddamn apartment? I'm gonna have to shower this place in febreze!"

Mark glared at him. "I expect some respect out of you."

"If I eat the dead possum will you drop the alpha dog exterior? It's seriously starting to get annoying." Jack walked closer to the carcass, still holding his hands over his mouth. 

"If that's what will get you to stop being such a little bitch, then yes." Mark tossed him the roadkill, forcing Jack to take his hands away from his face and catch the thing with a groan. "Fuckin' hell.." 

Robin shook his head. "Don't do it, man. There's stupid, and then there's eating roadkill." 

"He's not eating it," Mark interjected, crossing his arms. "He's drinking it." 

Jack sighed, looking down at the thing in his hands. Its fur was matted and knotted, tongue spilling out of its mouth in a crude fashion. Jack gagged, feeling his stomach do twists and turns similar to how it would on a rollercoaster. "I don't think I can do this." 

"If you don't I won't let you feed off of me, and I taste much better than that." Mark threatened, a hint of confidence in his voice. "Just do it. It's not as bad as you think." 

Jack closed his eyes and sank his teeth into the sunken in flesh of the possum, letting the blood of the animal spurt into his mouth like a tsunami. It tasted rotten and foul, making his noise crinkle up in distaste and Jack couldn't hold onto it for more than two seconds before throwing it to the floor, gagging into his t-shirt and running into the bathroom to let a flood of stomach acid and possum blood pour out of his mouth and into the sink, since he couldn't make it to the toilet fast enough. 

Robin groaned, grabbing a trash bag and picking up the possum with it. "His physiology has changed but he's still human on the inside, you know. You can't make him do shit like this without expecting a strong reaction." Folding the bag inside out, he took the possum and tossed it into a trash can. 

"I was human once too, I know how they work!" Mark snapped, rolling his eyes as the gagging and vomiting sounds continued into the background. 

"You haven't been human in a long time, jackass." Robin muttered, getting a water from the fridge and walking over to the bathroom. 

Jack coughed and spit into the sink, a line of drool connecting his mouth to the sink bowl as he turned on one of the faucets to move it down the drain. "I-I can't, I can't I can't I can't I f-fucking can't!" He stuttered as his voice broke, his legs threatening to give out on him at any moment. He gagged and retched again, the acid burning his throat and forcing what little was left out of his body and down the drain. 

"Dude, don't worry about it. I'll figure something out later."


	9. Mark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark wasn't always so cynical.

_Humans are so annoying._

Mark sat at a bar with a shot of whiskey in one hand and a bloody mary in the other. The incident that left Jack physically ill gave him his cue to leave without a word, and he was sure they weren't missing his presence. As much as he tried to make himself understand what his problem was, he couldn't.

"What's the big deal? It's only a possum." He said under his breath, downing the shot and motioning for the waiter to bring him another.

 -

 "Ugh, Thomas! Throw that shit away!"

Mark was cringing at the sight of a dead rat his brother was holding by the tail, its skull crushed by passing cars, with organ juice leaking out and dripping down its matted fur and paws. 

"Don't be such a baby, if you're gonna move to New York you have to be desensitized. It's much worse over there than it is over here."

"Okay, well I don't need to be desensitized right now!"

"Never too early to start." With the final word, Thomas threw the rat at him, juices splattering on his slacks and shirt. Mark groaned, feeling like the nastiest person on the planet. 

"You're a fucking cock," Mark laughed. "Ma's gonna be mad as hell when she realizes that she has to clean rat innards off my pants."

Thomas only snickered. "You're a funny old bird, y'know that? Leaving all of us here. Don't you think you'd miss us?"

"After that? Ab-so-lute-ly not."

"Dry up, ya big bimbo."

"Weren't we supposed to get Ma cigs?"

"Oh, horsefeathers." The two brothers ran through the streets of Cincinnati, to the nearest store to purchase a box of cigarettes for their mother. However, it didn't take long before the smog to roll in and cloud their vision, making it hard to see either of them. Puddles were being run through, causing filthy city water to get on the back of their socks. The two of them managed to drift apart, and suddenly Thomas couldn't see the other anymore. He had ran too far up ahead. 

Thomas called his brother, making sure he was in earshot. The inquisitive 26 year old raised his head, the smog of 1920's America making it hard to see more than 3 feet in front of him. 

"Right here, Thomas!"

"Stop fooling around, let's just go back home. Mom's afraid we're gonna get mugged."

"Oh, c'mon."

"I'm not playing, Mark. I'm real worried with all these Ku Klux Klan guys, and we might be next."

"Alright, alright. I'm right behind ya."

Mark followed the sound of his brother's voice, feeling his way through the fog and his boots clacking against the hard gravel road. It was rather cold for a summer night, the temperature dropping into the 50's. However, Ohio was humid as all hell. 

Thomas's voice got swallowed up in the fog, and soon Mark was running aimlessly through the streets of Cincinnati, which was a very scary place to be in (especially if you happened to look Asian). He squinted, doing his best to pinpoint Tom, but his vision was crud anyway and did little to help him see.

"Thomas?" His voice rang out into the fog, with nothing to bounce off of, as his shoes were overlapped by polluted puddles. "Thomas!"

No response. 

"C'mon Thomas, this shit isn't funny!" 

Still nothing. 

He wandered around for a few minutes, calling out his brother's name left and right, cupping his hands to make a makeshift megaphone. No responses were heard, and he could feel his heart leap from his chest into his throat, as the prospect that Thomas might genuinely be lost started to sink in more and more. 

After about 10 minutes of panicking, he heard it. 

"M-MARK!"

'Thomas?!" Mark yelled back into the void of fog. He looked around desperately, trying to figure out the direction in which the voice came from. It had sounded scared, and like something awful had happened. 

"MARK, HELP!"

Mark sprinted in the direction of the sound, his heart beating 100 miles per minute and his legs moving so fast that his calves began to burn. He couldn't think, he couldn't breathe-

 "THOMAS, WHERE ARE YOU?!" 

"MAR-" 

Mark arrived to the scene just in time to see a very pale man in a three piece suit rip his brother's throat out with his teeth and drink like he was in a speakeasy the fuzz was about to bust.

He was tall - much taller than Mark. He looked young: younger than him, if not the same age. He was a brunette, with blunt nails that were digging into his Tom's arm and teeth sharper than his suit. But what caught Mark off guard the most was his eyes: completely black like a demon, and showing no hint of remorse. 

The man threw his brother's limp corpse to the ground, blood tarnishing his exquisite suit. He laughed, wiping his mouth with his coat sleeve.

"Hello!" He greeted Mark with an unsettling amount of friendliness. "How are you on this wonderful night?" 

Mark couldn't breathe, or think. All he could see was Tom's dead body, and the pool of blood that was progressively getting bigger and bigger around him. 

"What? Never seen a vampire before?" He asked, flashing a toothy grin. "Well, relish it, 'cause you won't see another one." He hissed, grabbing Mark by the shoulders and slamming him up against a wall, making his head spin and vision blur. 

"Dan, wait!" Another voice rang out of the shadows, stopping the man from making a mess of his jugular. Mark could hear the groan of disapproval rising in the other's throat, and he blinked a few times to get a clear picture of what was going on. 

"What, Phillip?"

"Don't call me that."

His attacker rolled his eyes. 

"What, _Phil_?"

"Don't kill him." 

"Why the hell shouldn't I? He saw, and even if I promised to let him go, I'm pretty sure that's a blood relative." He nodded his head in the direction of Tom. 

"S-Shut the fuck up about Tom." Mark managed to choke a few words out. 

"See? He HAS to go." 

"Isn't there anything you can do? Make him forget or something?"

"I'm a vampire, not a genie." 

"Dan!" 

"Fine!"

With the final word, Dan sunk his teeth into Mark's neck, blood spilling out generously. Mark gasped in pain, trying to push him off and do anything that would drive Dan away. 

As fast as it had began, Dan pulled his mouth out of the wound he had created and threw Mark to the ground, similar to how he threw Thomas. "There, you happy?" He gestured to the other, who had a look of pain on his face. 

"W.. What did you do?" Mark's voice was weak as he put his hand over the injury, crimson flooding through his fingers and down his arm.

"Be lucky he was here, because if he wasn't I would have taken your head off with one swipe." Was all Dan said. "Now, scram. Before I decide to do it anyway."

Mark took a second to collect his thoughts, and scrambled to his feet to pick up Tom's body. He wasn't going to leave him there, for those assholes to suck dry. 

_How am I going to explain this to Ma?_

_Tom's dead._

_Who was he and why did he look like that?_

_-_

_".._ ir? Sir, can you hear me?"

Mark snapped out of his haze to see the bartender looking at him with a look of confusion and concern. 

"What?"

"I asked if you wanted a refill on that shot." 

Mark leaned back in his bar chair, rubbing his eyes.

"Yeah. And I'm gonna need a lotta refills after that." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for this being so late shit went down school wise and im stressing out but here it is! next chapter


	10. Banter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Robin conversations.

_Knock knock knock._

Jack gave a groan of annoyance, his throat too shredded from stomach acid to actually speak. Robin took this as a cue to come in. 

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty." He sang, despite the fact that it was well into the afternoon.

"Shut the fuck up." 

Robin snickered and threw a rather cold sack of liquid at him. Out of curiosity, Jack poked his head out of the covers to see what was assaulting his palace of warmth, to see a pint of blood staring back at him. 

"W-Where did you get this?" His voice got stuck on his destroyed throat, making the words come out all jumbled and stuttered.

"I have my ways. Just drink it, I wanna see how you feel." He didn't like the devilish smirk on Robin's face as he reached over and grabbed the gelatinous plastic, debating on how to open it without spilling it everywhere and making the room look like a crime scene. 

Robin rolled his eyes. "Can't you just bite into it or something?" He remarked, a tone of annoyance in his voice. 

The thought hadn't occurred to him. Jack reluctantly bit into the hard plastic, his sharper teeth extending involuntarily as the cold, thick blood flooded into his mouth.

The idea was still revolting to him; drinking the shit that runs through people's veins. Blood could carry diseases, and even if this stuff came from the hospital where they make sure that people with mad cow and AIDS don't get their blood drawn, it was still running through the back of his mind.

Still, he couldn't deny how good it felt.

Jack let out a groan of relief, drinking it like he was in the desert and he hadn't had water in days. It washed away the soreness in his throat, and he squeezed down on the plastic, pushing more of it into his mouth. It wasn't long before the bag was completely drained, and Jack gave a small whimper at the loss. Robin looked rather horrified. 

"S-Sorry-"

"No, it's fine. I asked." Robin didn't look fine at all; quite the opposite. He had gone 50 shades paler and was slowly making his way to the door. Subtle enough that if Jack wasn't paying attention, he probably wouldn't have noticed. And also if his ears didn't pick up the very quiet sounds of his shoes shuffling away. "Call me if you need anything alright?" 

"Yeah."

That left Jack all alone again, and 5 minutes ago he probably would have been grateful, but now he missed the lack of silence. He would even take Mark's obnoxiously loud voice, if that meant he didn't have to be by himself. He wondered where he went after all the shit went down. Not enough to go looking, since Mark is an asshat, but enough to think about. 

Soon enough, Jack got sick of thinking and got out of bed, despite the protest from his muscles. A shower was in order, and nothing was going to get in his way. 

_**CRASH.** _

_What the hell?_

_-_

 

Robin swore, cup shards shattered in every direction possible, and now, not getting his hand cut was becoming a top priority. He squatted down and began to sweep them away. "It's almost as if I became more clumsy as soon as it becomes detrimental for me to bleed," he muttered to himself, grabbing a broom from a closet. "Today's my lucky day." 

Jack came out of his room, still kind of looking like shit, but considerably better than he did before. It was almost kind of adorable: He had his comforter wrapped around him and over his head to where he looked like a fluffy nun.

"Hey, sorry for the mess." Robin gave a small smile, tossing the bigger shards into a garbage bag. "I was just saying; it seems almost as if I became more clumsy right when being careful mattered the most."

"I don't think you're clumsy."

"This is, like, the third plate I've broken in the week where blood cannot be shown to you." 

Jack nodded. That much was true. 

"Are you feeling better?"

"Much." he yawned, tossing the comforter onto the couch. "Thanks for that. God knows the risk you took to give that to me."

Robin shrugged. "No one suspects the goody two shoes. Anyways, it was no problem. Should I make that a regular thing?"

"No!" Jack yelled, Robin flinching as a response to the sudden reaction. "I mean, no, I don't want you to get into trouble, and that's probably super illegal."

"How illegal can it be when your best friend is a vampire?" 

This time it was Jack's turn to recoil, but this time in disgust rather than fear. "I hate that word." 

"Why? It perfectly describes what you are." 

"No, it doesn't." He spat, folding his arms across his chest in defensiveness. "It sounds fake, it sounds like some magical creature that sparkles and falls in love, it even sounds _desirable_ under a certain light!" 

Robin stayed quiet to hear him rant - figured it would be good to get it out of his system. 

"When in reality, it fucking sucks! I miss going outside. I miss pizza! I miss going to classes. It's all Mark's fault, too. And I can't even do anything, since he's my only shot of being able to contain this in the slightest." He sounded like he was on the verge of tears. 

"I bet there are some plus sides to this, too." Robin chimed in. "We just haven't seen them yet." 

"Like what?" He laughed sarcastically. "Because this whole thing hasn't been cool. Like, at all." 

"You know when someone is bleeding before they do, that's pretty cool."

"Only because these weird fucking teeth above my actual teeth automatically extend out of my face. And if I'm not careful, I'll cut my tongue on them." He put his hands up to his face and made little motions to give Robin an idea of what he meant. 

"Not gonna lie, that sounds cool as fuck." 

Jack scowled, but secretly enjoyed the praise. "And I can hear things I don't want to hear. Such as your heart beat, and our downstairs neighbors having sex at an absurd volume."

"Really? I don't hear anything."

"Be fucking glad you don't. I think they're using whips."

Robin snorted. "See? That's so cool. And since Mark is way more trained, I bet he can figure out how to help you tune things out and shit."

"I still think he's a dick." 

"Dude. Even he thinks he's a dick."

"So why do we listen to him?!"

"Do you know any other vampires?"

"Fuck off, shouldn't you know some since you work in a hospital? That seems like the most logical job for them to have!"

"Mark's an engineer."

" _Other than him!_ "

"Where is he, by the way?"

"Who fucking cares? Last time he was here, he brought roadkill with him."

"He's still important and a value to you. We should figure out where he is." 

"Are you seriously saying we have to go look for him?"

Robin nodded. "Are you up for going out? It's close to night, so you won't get horrifically burned. Grab a hoodie and I'll shield you the best I can."

"Gee, thanks." Jack went back into his room to trade out his sweatpants for something more presentable: some black skinny jeans and a grey sweatshirt, to make sure his skin didn't sizzle and burn. 

He came out, where Robin was waiting with a thick rain poncho and a stupidly large umbrella. 

"I am not using that." 

"C'mon!" Robin pleaded. "You're going to get burned if you don't."

"I would honestly rather watch my skin peel off." 

"At least take the umbrella."

"No!"

Robin rolled his eyes and tossed the accessories to the side. "You're going to wish we brought them when we get outside."

"No, I'm pretty sure I won't." Jack pushed Robin out of the apartment, following suit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these kind of chapters are probably my favorite to write


	11. Bar Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A loss of humanity.

"This would be so much easier if one of us bothered to get his number."

Jack and Robin were walking in the bitter cold, looking for Mark; while Jack appeared to be perfectly fine in just a hoodie, Robin was shivering underneath a rather heavy winter coat. 

"Well geez, if I only I had thought of that! What do you think would have been a good time to ask: when his hand was wrapped around my throat, or when he brought a fucking dead possum into the apartment?" Robin snapped, dripping with sarcasm.

"Maybe it should've been you who got the poncho." 

That earned a rather obvious roll of the eyes, as the two continued to walk by places where they assumed he'd be: he was a night time guy, so chances are that he might not even be outside yet, but it was still good to check. 

The pair were just passing a very Irish looking bar when they heard a loud crash from inside, followed by various screams of different pitches. 

"The hell?" Robin said what both of them were thinking, and was about to go inside, when Jack grabbed him by the coat sleeve and shook his head furiously.

"I don't think we should go in there." He had gotten paler, his grip tight enough to make his knuckles go white. 

"Why not?"

"I have a really bad feeling, okay?"

"Well can you put your feeling aside for two seconds? Something is super wrong and I feel guilty standing here, not doing anything!"

"Robin, it reeks of blood in there!"

"Do you wanna stay outside then?"

"Hell no, I'm not letting you go alone!"

"Then stop being a pussy and let's go!"

Robin went inside without another word, dragging Jack along with him, and was met with the sight of a thoroughly trashed bar. It reeked of cheap liquor, puke, and vaguely of blood. Several tables were reduced to splinters, and the bartender was shivering violently and cowering behind the bar. A variety of bodies were left on the floor, some of them still bleeding and warm.

"Holy fuck," Jack swore, covering his nose and mouth with the front of his hoodie. "What happened here?"

" **I** happened here."

And there Mark was, emerging out of the men's bathroom with his hands ridiculously stained red and his glasses shattered and slightly askew. He was trying to rub off most of it with some paper towels, which looked silly: he was never going to get anything off with those. 

"The fuck did you do?!" Robin cried, staring wide-eyed at a very fresh looking corpse. "How can you possibly explain this to the Boston police?!"

"That's what he's here for." Mark fixed his glasses, gesturing to the paling bartender, still shaking in the corner. "Hey Jack, brought you dinner, so drink up. You're not gonna get a chance like this for a while."

"You fuck off." Jack muffled from underneath the fabric of his hoodie. "I'm not doing thaf shif." 

"I can hear your stomach growling." 

"Fffuck you!"

Mark glared at him. "I'm trying to help you, and you're going to deny something so vitally important?!" He threw his broken glasses onto the floor in anger, his hair the same shade of red as his stained hands. "Why on Earth am I sticking around, if you're going to refuse everything I do for you!" 

Jack took the fabric away from his face so he could actually enunciate clearly. "Why does everything you do have to deal with vile and disgusting solutions?! I'm not killing people, and I'm not taking from the streets like a filthy raccoon! Robin has been more helpful than you, and he doesn't know shit! So, really, why _ARE_ you sticking around if you're clearly not wanted!" 

"Gee, thanks." Robin quietly huffed off to the side, folding his arms across his chest.

Mark's voice had gotten dangerously quiet. "I could take you down faster than you could _ever_ imagine, I don't think it's wise to be back talking to me."

"Good grief, do you ever get tired of kissing your own ass?!"

With that final word, Mark was suddenly punching Jack in the stomach, kicking his knee out so that he fell down to the floor. Jack groaned, holding his midsection like his intestines were spilling out. Mark grabbed Jack by the throat, squeezing hard so that only a little bit of air could make its way to his lungs, keeping him conscious. 

"You arrogant, annoying, obnoxious little shit!" Mark swore, throwing him across the room, to where Jack left a sizable dent in the wall with his body. 

Jack couldn't open his eyes without the room spinning in several different directions. His entire body ached; his muscles were tired and stretched too far, his chest felt like it was caving in on itself, and he could hear Robin's voice in the background saying something, but it was too foggy to make out clearly. 

"Stop, stop, stop!" Robin used himself as a shield to prevent Mark from throwing a miraculously still intact table where Jack was lying in a crumpled heap. "Chill!"

"Why should I?!"

"He's always like that, I should know! I'm his fucking roommate!"

"Doesn't give him an excuse to mouth off to me!"

 _"His entire body is a mouth!"_  

"Guuyyyss, stop.." Jack garbled out, standing up slowly and painfully. "I caan't win, I'll just do w-what he wants me to." 

Robin visibly paled. "Wait, Jack, this is insane, these are people, they were alive, they had families and aspirations-"

"They're not alive now." Jack cut off his rambling. "And it wasn't me who killed them. I won't take from the living." 

Mark grimaced. "It's a start." 

Robin was speechless. His friend had just thrown away all of his morals- what the hell was happening to him? These were people! 

And with a final nod, Jack leaned down and picked up the body of a petite blonde girl with blue eyes. Her sweater was stained with red, her jeans mopping up the puddle around her, and he didn't want the two guys to see him cry. _I'm sorry_ , he thought to himself, and bit down on her neck ferociously, teeth hitting skin and ripping flesh like it was paper. Gulp after gulp, grip getting tighter and tighter. He couldn't stop, even if he wanted to. His stomach could finally stop screaming at him, and suddenly there was nothing left. She's completely drained. 

Robin looked scared out of his mind. 

Mark looked pleased. 

And Jack wished he was dead. 


	12. Suspicion

Dan was sitting on at his desk, feet propped up, with a lit cigarette lazily hanging out of his mouth. Scattered pictures of the crime scene were in a manila folder, and he was flipping through them like a sick and twisted scrap book. Bodies strewn about, various internal organs lying across the bar floor, and the worst part was there was little to no lead as to who or what had done this. He could feel the oncoming migraine creeping up on him, and pinched the bridge of his nose to try and stave it off as best he could.

Although, his loud and blundering partner barging into the room with a drink tray filled with coffee certainly didn't help in lessening the throbbing.

"FUCK, dude!" Arin yelled,  almost tripping and spilling the coffee all over the grossly-colored carpet. "I've never seen a case like this in my entire career!" He set down the drinks and pulled up a chair, taking a look at the folder containing all of the crime scene photos. "What do you think did this?"

He sighed. "I don't know, man. If I'm being honest, it looks like a wild animal did it, but this is in the heart of Boston so it's highly unlikely that that's the case." He looked over to the drink tray. "Which one's mine?"

Arin pointed to a certain cup. "Black. That one's Barry's-" he pointed to another one for each person- "that one's Suzy's, and this is mine." He took his out and took a sip of it, burning his tongue and instinctively pulling away. "Ow. Hot."

Dan snickered. "You're a fuckin' idiot, I hope you know that." He grabbed his coffee and set it down on the desk adjacent to him. "If this was a person, what kind of person do you think did this?" He asked, flipping through the police records of past criminals. "I've never seen a human being so vicious."

"That doesn't mean it isn't possible. History has a number of people vicious enough to do something like this: Vlad the Impaler, Joesph Stalin, shit, you could probably include Jeffrey Dahmer if you count the weird, chompy bites on several of the victims."

"Yeah, that's another thing that confused me!" Dan threw a picture of the neck of a girl with a massive bite taken out of it. The teeth marks were mostly blunt, sans a few canines, but they were not made to bite flesh in such a way from an evolutionary standpoint. "If a person did this, is it a cannibal?"

Arin snorted. "We have a cannibal in Boston?"

"That would certainly be a one for the history books." He took another case file out, handing it to Arin. "Richard Yard, 21. Barista at a local coffee shop. Was attacked by something with the exact same teeth pattern - most of them blunt except for the two canines. He reported that he couldn't remember what attacked him, but was certain it was another person."

Arin flipped through the case, looking at the wounds Jonathan had and matching them up to the bodies at the bar. "If this is a cannibal, why did they let Jonathan go, but mass murder an entire bar's worth of people?" He questioned, switching the photographs to compare. "And cannibals have a history of taking the bodies home, keeping them in storage so that they don't have to go out and kill for a while. This guy took a bite from a couple and left. Some of them are just dead - no bite mark or anything. Why?"

"Probably to get rid of the amount of witnesses."

"Then why is the bartender still alive?"

Dan shrugged. "This is just so weird. I've been on the force since I was 27, and I have never seen something like this. Why was the bartender allowed to live but the others not? He clearly could have killed him."

"Can we get anything out of him?" Arin asked, setting his coffee down. "Or at least, anything useful?"

Dan shook his head. "Only thing we can get out of the bartender is how he was vampire. 'Vampire, vampire,' he mumbles, over and over again. It doesn't help that he also has a history of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."

"So he's completely uncredible?"

"Not completely. I would say next to nothing."

Arin let out a long, arduous groan. "You've got to be fuckin' joking. Our only witness has a history of schizophrenia?"

He gave a defeated nod. "So our only lead would be to wait for him to strike again."

"We can't do that!" Arin jumped up to his feet, brows furrowed with frustration and angry. "These were people! They had families and children, and we're going to put MORE people on a little fishing line and dangle them out in open water for whoever or WHATEVER this thing is to bite onto?!"

"I don't see you coming up with any better ideas!" Dan snapped, staying seated in his chair. "Unless you want to listen to Mr. Looney Tunes and go vampire hunting, this is our only option!"

On that final note, Arin stormed out of his law partner's office, stomping all the way back to his desk. _He's so fucking selfish. How can you just throw away lives like that? Like throwing bread to ducks._ He sat down at his desk and gave another loud groan, then typed some numbers into a dusty looking phone and waited for someone to pick up.

"Hello?" A friendly female voice echoed out of the speakers.

"Suzy, can you give me that one witness to the bar massacre's address?" Arin asked, pulling out a pen and paper. "I wanna try talking to him."

 

-

 

 This was stupid. Arin knew this was stupid. In fact, this was completely and unapologetically the worst idea he had ever had.

 _What am I gonna do, ask him about the vampire that doesn't exist?_ He thought to himself, flipping through his phone of this guy's profile. Jonathan Friar, 5'10", brown eyes, diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a kid which rapidly turned into full blown psychosis. Arrested at age 14 for breaking and entering, arrested again at age 16 for theft, but nonetheless, graduated with honors and left his hometown to study nursing in Boston. Graduated, again, with honors, and is currently residing in Newton, but still works in the area. Mother and father passed away in freak car accident soon after he graduated college, and a will hadn't been made yet, since his parents didn't think they'd die so soon, so he has to wait for the bank to stop being assholes and transfer his parents' pitiful estate to him, but it was taking long time. All of the charges that he had created against him were nullified once he turned 18, so he didn't have anything to worry about in that sense, and it was worth noting that his parents had died recently, so it was probably his best course of action to not mention them in any way, shape, or form.

With all these thoughts running through his mind, a very skinny, very tired looking young man, wrapped in a duvet and holding a steaming mug of green tea, opened his door slightly, so that he could see the cop but the cop could only see half of him and none of his apartment.

"Can I help you?" Jonathan's voice was tinny and small, like he was a kid that got picked on at the playground a lot, just aged 15 years older than usual.

"Yes, I believe you can." Arin raised his police badge for Jonathan see, to whom gave a small, almost unnoticeable wince. "My name is Arin Hanson, and I'm investigating a series of murders that occurred at Sean's bar earlier this week. I was hoping I could ask you a couple questions."

"I-I already talked to your partner, I answered everything he asked me, I was very compliant!" Jon's face was paling, and he shook his head reluctantly. "I don't have any more information that the police doesn't already know."

"My partner has told me that he has talked to you, but if you would be so kind as to lend me a second of your time, I'll be in and out of your hair as fast as possible." Arin felt really bad for harassing this dude, even if he had to be as stone cold as he could. The dude was visibly shaking.

Jonathan thought for a few seconds, but opened the door and moved to the side so that Arin could step in with ease. His apartment was cozy: it had prints of futuristic looking art, the couch looked comfortable, and his kitchen was filled with multicolored appliances and novelty items. Arin sat down on the couch, taking in the atmosphere.

"How's life been treating you, Jon?" He asked calmly, Jon taking a seat across from him in a comfy looking recliner. He still looked afraid, and that would probably incite suspicion in Arin if this was anyone else, but the dude witnessed a mass murder, so he let him off the hook.

"It's been okay. Workin'. Girlfriend wants me to meet her parents. Witnessing a fuckin' crime against humanity." He said dryly, sipping from his tea. "I hope I don't seem rude, officer, but I would rather skip the pleasantries and get to the point." He seemed a lot more confident in his voice than he was a few minutes ago.

Arin raised his eyebrow, but said no more. "Alright then. Relay me the entire incident, from start to finish."

"The cop filtered version, or the one that I think happened but I'm not really sure?"

"The one you think happened."

Jonathan sighed. "You're not gonna believe me."

"I'm not exactly a close-minded person, to be frank with you."

Jonathan was still wary of his presence, but didn't say much else.

"Normal Friday night. It's getting into the early morning, and I'm about to start last call when this dude comes in. Not that intimidating, to be honest. Kinda looks like a geek. He's some sort of Asian, I can guess that. His hair is dyed a firetruck red, and he comes to the bar and orders a bloody mary. Sure, why not? This isn't exactly making my gears turn in a something-is-wrong sense. Until, he grabs me by the shoulder, and slams my head against the bar counter." He shudders, putting his hand on his face as if he can still feel the impact of his bones smacking against polished wood.

"What did you do then?"

"I think I screamed. I dunno. A span of time passed by, I'm not sure how long, I woke up to the stench of blood reeking throughout the bar, and my first thought is how my boss is going to skin me alive for getting blood all over his mahogany bar counter." He laughs quietly, tears starting to well up in his eyes, but refusing to drop. "And when I say it reeks, it fuckin' REEKS. I felt like I was in a pig slaughterhouse."

Arin cringed at the thought, nausea bubbling in his throat. He can't imagine to the sight of bodies.

"That guy is still there, and-and.." His voice starts to falter as he tried to phrase the words properly. "This is where the police department stops believing me."

"Well, it's not the police department here, it's me." Arin reassured. "And I'm not gonna judge you. I just want to find out what happened to these people and bring their killer to justice."

Jonathan still looked scared, but continued. "The guy is drinking the blood of dead patrons. Like a fuckin' tick." The words dripped off of his tongue like cough syrup, as he was reliving every terrible memory. "He.. He catches sight of me, and I try to run for it, but he's fast as hell. As soon as I know it, he's got his hand wrapped around my throat in a vice grip. How this dude traveled 30 feet in 3 seconds? Beats me. But his eyes are black, like a demon."

"Are you a religious man, Jonathan?"

"I grew up Roman Catholic, but I haven't exactly been devout ever since I graduated from high school." He admitted sheepishly.

"Does this encounter convince you of a higher power."

He paused, then shook his head. "God wouldn't have made such a horrifying creature to walk the Earth along side us."

Arin nodded. "What happened after this man began to strangle you?"

"He said something to me. I don't remember the exact words, my head was fuzzy. I think it was something along the lines of 'there is no rest for the wicked'? I dunno. Guy was batshit and I just wanted to run away as fast as I could."

"You mentioned in your testimony that other people were in the bar along with that man. Can you describe them to me?"

"Y-Yeah. Two white guys. One with green hair and a thick Irish accent. He looked just as horrified as I felt, he was yelling at the perpetrator. 'How could you do this, this is wrong', blah blah blah. Another one, kinda around the same height as the other two, was agreeing with him but he didn't have a specific dialect to go with it. I think he was American. Red hair starts bitching how green hair won't accept anything that he's trying to do for him, green hair gets snarky and he ends up being thrown into a wall."

"The killer threw one of his allies into a wall?"

"I don't know if they were allies, but they weren't exactly rushin' to the police."

"How bad was he hurt?"

"The poor dude was thrown so hard he made a dent in the wood. Whoever this killer is, he's wicked strong. But he got up with a grunt and submitted."

"Submitted to what?"

Jonathan grimaced. "He said something about how he couldn't win, and that he wasn't stupid I think. How red hair was too powerful for him and he couldn't resist him forever. He starts drinking from some poor girl on the floor with her eyes wide open and her corpse frozen with fear and rigor mortis."

"Like the killer did?"

"Like the killer did."

Arin whistled. This was a lot of information to take in. "Do you ever think that these people were Satanists or occultists?"

"Possibly."

"What do you think they were?"

"Vampires." His face was hardened, no emotion to be seen for miles. He was determined to be taken seriously. "And I know your buddy doesn't believe me. He ripped me a new one when I told him the exact same story, but I know what I saw. I didn't get administered with any drugs, I wasn't drunk, and I am telling you that there's something powerful and dangerous in Boston." 

"You're sure its vampires?"

"100%."

Arin got up from the couch, and straightened out his suit, which had crumped for sitting for a long period of time. "Thank you, Mr. Friar. Your testimony is very important to the solving of this case and we will not let your word be taken for granted."

"You better not."

Jonathan retreated from the living room and into his bedroom, shutting it without a word. Arin took this as his cue to leave.

As he was walking down the stairs, he couldn't help but feel like he the witness wasn't lying, and that he genuinely believed everything he was saying. As if vampires were a genuine thing and people could actually drink blood without procuring some awful disease.

 _I should remember the descriptions of these people to keep in the case file,_ he mentally made a note. _I can't let these people get away from us._


	13. Unlucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four days have passed since Mark made the stupidest decision ever, and the worst that could've happened, happens to our troublesome three.

"Robin can you stop fucking pacing? You're making me anxious."

Robin was nervously walking around the apartment in circles, and didn't stop when it was brought to his attention.

"Well gee, I'm sorry, it's not like WE WERE JUST AT A FUCKING CRIME SCENE."

"Well you're not exactly helping!" Jack snapped, glaring up at him from over his laptop screen. "Your incessant pacing is freaking me out!" He looked over at Mark, who was absentmindedly looking out the window and bouncing his leg. "Stupid asshole. I think it was a mistake keeping a witness around, you don't know what he could've told the police."

"Oh, so you wanted to kill him?" Mark remarked lazily.

"No!" he halfway yelled. "I just.. I think you shouldn't have let him get away without much repercussions. He knows what you look like, he knows what WE look like." Jack decided that he couldn't make this argument sound any better and was beginning to dig himself a hole, so he left it at that.

"What is he going to tell the police? That a vampire broke into the bar and killed everyone?" Mark drawled in a sarcastic tone, rolling his eyes. "You'll be fine. And, even if something happens, which it won't, I can just skip town. I've done it before. Not to mention, it's been like a week. Don't you think they would have found our criminal profiles by now?"

Jack threw him a sneer and went back to clacking away at his keyboard. "4 days, Einstein. You're not seriously thinking that they would have come after us by now, do you? Haven't you watched any murder cases on TV? They stake us out first! They learn our schedule and figure out how we go about the day without us noticing. Not to mention that I will not leave the house without a massive hoodie covering everything that makes me stand out."

"What was that about skipping town before?" Robin interjected from a back room.

Mark looked slightly hurt. "I don't watch TV."

"Oh yeah, that's right. You're like 3 billion years old."

"I'm 89, asshole!"

"You surpass both of my parents and one of my grandparents."

Mark threw a pillow at him with annoyance, then went back to brooding on the couch. "I still think you're over exaggerating."

"You CLEARLY do not understand the concept of the modern justice system if you think I am over exaggerating."

Robin rolled his eyes at the pair bickering like an old married couple. "Could you two get along for at least five seconds?"

And in an instance of perfectly timed sitcom-esque comedy, they both gestured towards the other and gave a resounding "He started it!"

Robin gave an overdramatic sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I hate the both of you."

The two went back to brooding dramatically, which made the environment go from hostile to tense in 5 seconds. The whole world was resting on Jack's shoulders, and it was stressing him out more than a little bit. How on Earth was he going to fix this? How was Mark being so goddamn calm about this? It almost infuriated him. It's not every day you get to hide from the police.

And then the doorbell rang.

-

Robin wasn't having the best of days.

The day admittedly wasn't going any better when the police decided to show up at his apartment door, demanding to ask questions about his whereabouts on a certain date.

A harsh rapping on the door brought everyone's attention to laser precise level, and he could feel the blood draining out of his face. "Fuck, what do we do?!" Robin whispered fervently, hands shaking with anxiety and the pacing becoming more rapid.

"Me and Jack will hide out in a room so that they can't see us. We're probably the most distinguishable with the brightly colored hair giving us away like a fucking traffic light." Mark planned, grabbing Jack out of the chair and yanking him to his feet. "Robin, just try not to get yourself arrested, alright?"

"Gee, thanks asshole."

Jack and Mark dashed into a bedroom and Robin straightened himself out, hating at how messy the apartment was. Various blankets were strewn across the sectional, coats had fallen off of the hangers and onto the floor where they kept their shoes. But with a final deep breath, he opened the door to greet the two officers, who were about to knock again since it was taking them so long.

"Good afternoon." A bushy haired, skinny cop in a navy blue suit raised a badge and shoved it in Robin's face for him to authenticate. "My name is Dan Avidan, this is Arin Hanson. We work for the Boston police department and we have reason to believe you were a witness to the recent massacre at Sean's Bar, as I'm sure you've heard of it."

"I have." Robin made his responses short and curt, but didn't deny the fact that he had seen it. Lying to the police seemed like a bad idea.

"May we come in?"

"Sure."

The two cops walked into the apartment, looking around and taking in the scenery. Robin cursed to himself, again, for at least not picking up the spare bowls and cups that were left on end tables and the breakfast bar.

" 'S a lot of cups for one person." The other cop remarked, picking up a novelty mug with Jack's name on it.

"I share an apartment with my roommate." Robin admitted, taking the cup from him and putting it in the sink. "I apologize for the mess, if I had known I would get visitors I would have cleaned up a bit."

Dan shook his head. "Nothing to worry about, man. Where is your roommate?"

This is where Robin knew he was going to have to lie. "He's at university for his morning classes."  _Oh man, that's gonna bite you in the ass later_ , he thought to himself.

Arin nodded and took a seat on the comfortable looking sectional, gesturing for the others to join him.

"Can I ask why you would think of me when solving the Sean's Bar murders?" Robin's voice was kind of strained, but sat down, albeit uncomfortably, in a separate chair.

"Calm down, dude. We're not gonna arrest you right here." Arin teased, chuckling lightly. "Our only witness gave us a description of a guy similar to you. And by the way you're acting, I would say it's a fair deduction that you're our guy. That, and with geographical deduction of Robin's in the state and various searching through universities and hospitals, here we are."

"Who's your witness?"

"The only person left alive; the bartender."

Robin gulped. Could everyone see the sweat dripping down his forehead?

"What do you need to know, officers?"

"What did you see, and who did you see. Relay the experience and don't leave a single detail out." Dan put emphasis on the word 'single'.

Robin sighed. "It was rather early in the morning, around 7 or 8, and me and my roommate heard a bunch of crashing from inside the local pub. Not a super weird occurrence, but certainly abnormal. We assumed that the staff was probably cleaning up after a rough night of binge drinking, and were about to continue on our way. As soon as we passed by, a really loud noise came from inside, like a smashing of bottles and tables. My roommate didn't want to check it out, but I did, so I went in and he eventually followed." Robin was doing his best to not lie, but he couldn't exactly tell them who the murderer was. "We saw some guy, he was short and stocky with bright red hair, and he was running away, so we chased after him, but he was too fast."

"Why did you not tell this information to the police?" Dan asked, with a stern 'you should have known better' tone.

"Fear." Robin choked out, his knuckles white from clutching the arm of his chair so hard.

"Fear?"

"Yeah, I thought I would go to prison for being there."

Arin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "While it wasn't the greatest decision to walk into a crime scene, you were not aware of the situation at hand and neither was your roommate. Did you see the bartender?"

Robin nodded. "But then we saw the guy running and didn't have time to talk to him." Robin was so pleased with himself. He had no idea he could lie out of his ass like that.

Dan nodded grimly, and stood up from his chair. "Well, I think that's all the information we need. I thank you for your time, Mr. Robin, and next time you see something, please don't be afraid to tell us. You're a witness, not the perpetrator."

Robin gave a nervous laugh and walked the two officers to the door. "I hope you guys find the murderer."

Arin waved goodbye, and said, "I hope we do too," and then closed the door.

Robin felt like he ran a marathon.

-

Mark and Jack ran out of the bedroom that they had locked themselves in as soon as the cops were out of earshot.

"YOU RATTED ME OUT?!" Mark screamed, his face as red as his hair. "YOU GAVE A DESCRIPTION OF ME TO THE BOSTON POLICE?!"

"What the hell am I supposed to do?!" Robin snapped back. "They know I was there, they know Jack was there, and they already knew you were there! I can't lie to the fucking government, are you batshit crazy?!"

"And calm down, anyway!" Jack tried to intervene. "You've been alive this long, what makes you think you'll be caught anyway?"

"Because!" Mark shrieked, his eyes clouding over black. "I was caught for a different crime, you fuckwad! Don't you think that its weird that the same criminal who's responsible for the Sean Bar's murders 8is also the criminal who stole some blood transfusions from a hospital in 1987, and yet this criminal hasn't aged? Like, AT ALL?!"

"Why the fuck did you steal from a hospital?" Jack questioned. "Why didn't you just do what you do know, take from the living and then run away?"

"Sorry if I don't wanna drink HIV/AIDS infected blood, dumbass." Mark scorned, as if this was obvious. "That's the equivalent of drinking sewer water, if you needed a comparison."

Robin sighed. "Well, now what?"

Jack suddenly stood up. "The description is short and stocky with red hair, isn't it?" Jack asked, and Robin nodded in response. "Hold on, I'll be right back." Jack grabbed his coat off the rack and left swiftly. 5 minutes later, he came back with a box of hair dye.

"We just need to change what you look like."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I know I've been gone for a while but now it is summer break and I can do whatever the hell I want, which means more updates! Thank you to everyone who continues to tune in!


	14. Surprisingly Domestic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief break from the action. This chapter isn't crucial to the story line, but it will explain a little bit in the beginning of chapter 16.

"I _fucking_ hate this."

"Do you want the Boston police to find you, send you to prison, where you ultimately get buttfucked by a 6'4" convict named Tiny? No. So shut the fuck up." Jack clapped back in a calm and collected voice, running his fingers through Mark's hair to get the product all the way to the scalp. The red hair was slowly being covered by this pitch black dye, which would be hell to take out if he ever decided to go with colored hair again.

"Who said I needed help dying my hair?"

"You, when you said, 'I'm not dying my hair'."

"I'll fucking break your leg."

"You won't."

"Why not?"

"I dunno. I just know you won't."

"You do not give me enough credit."

Jack accidentally dropped a glob of hair dye and it landed right on Mark's face, who yelled in dismay.

"Oh, fuck you!"

"I didn't mean it!"

"Bullshit, you meant it and you're not sorry."

"Well you're right on one thing. I am absolutely not sorry."

"You drive me insane."

"And yet, you stick around."

"HOOOOOOOOOOOLY SHIT, will YOU TWO SHUT the FUCK UP?" Robin yelled, reading a magazine from the living room. "I SWEAR, it's like listening to my grandparents bicker!"

"I can probably replace one of your grandparents with a punch to the throat!" Mark retorted, giving Robin the middle finger from the bathroom.

"Touche." Robin rolled his eyes and went back to doing reading up on old school vampire lore to educate himself.

"Why did you dye your hair, anyway?" Jack asked, working the dye into his scalp, which was admittedly getting everywhere. "You usually like to stay out of the lime light, what would make you want to stick out like a sore thumb?"

Mark tensed up at the subject being brought up, but immediately relaxed, hoping that Jack wouldn't have noticed. He did.

"It was Amy's favorite color." His voice was too quiet for any normal human to perceive, but Jack heard it very clearly.

"Amy? Who's that?"

This time, Mark didn't try to hide how uncomfortable he was.

"She was.... A friend."

"A friend you dyed your hair for? C'mon."

"Alright fine, she was a girlfriend." He snapped, turning away from Jack and folding his arms defensively.

"Was?"

"Ask another question about her and I'll punch you in the dick."

"Maybe you should have come up with a lie to prevent me from asking so many questions."

Mark scoffed, looking at Jack's reflection in the mirror. "She passed away a long, long, time ago."

Jack was offput by the answer. "She's dead?"

Mark nodded.

It was then that Jack decided to stop asking questions.

 

-

 

Mark's head was being doused in the sink, watching the murky water flood out of his hair. His flush of red hair was gone, to be replaced with a color that unanimously looked more natural. He looked up at the two men, shaking his head back and forth to rid himself of some of the moisture. And also to intentionally spray the other two with dye water.

"Oh, fuck you." Robin cursed, throwing a towel at him. "You did absolutely not need to do that."

Mark grinned, running the towel through his drenched hair. "How's it look, though?"

Jack nodded. "You look.. Good."

Mark appreciated the compliment, but didn't say anything. "That bar tender specifically pointed out my hair. That's one detail about me that he doesn't have anymore. Although, there is still one last thing that concerns me."

Robin looked confused. "What is it?"

Mark pointed to the fading, green, rooted mess that was Jack's hair.

"If I gotta do it, so do you."

Jack groaned. "You're joking, I actually really like this on me!"

Mark shook his head. "An eye for an eye, Mcloughlin."

 

 

 


	15. Halted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan and Arin seem to be at a dead end; Jack's second time taking from someone who wasn't dead doesn't go so well.

Arin came back to the office, jubilant with information. He had got something! He may be fairly new at this, but he's progressing and doing well. Not so bad for a rookie. He and Dan came back to the office, and he got some claps on the back from a few superiors. Damn, he felt like he was on top of the world. 

However, Dan wasn't so optimistic. 

"C'mon Dan, what's wrong?" He asked, spinning around in his swivel chair with the case file in his lap. "We got something, we got information that we wouldn't have gotten if we hadn't been smart about it! Lighten up a little bit." 

Dan shook his head. "Things aren't always as they seem." He took the case file out of Arin's lap and pulled out the security camera pictures of Robin and his roommate leaving the bar. "If what he says is true, which is not a guarantee, then yes we have ruled out a couple people as suspects but we are no closer to finding the culprit. All we know is that he's short, of Asian descent, and has red colored hair. Which is none of the people that we saw exiting or entering that bar. Which either means that someone is lying, or that the camera was knocked out. And there's a time gap in the footage, which means that the latter is correct." Dan pointed to the time frames on the right bottom corner of the pictures- the first pictures began at 11 P.M. and continued, until dropping out around 4 and then resuming at 7 to 7:30 A.M.

Arin's smile began to fade, but he tried to get it back. "But what if we interrogate Robin's roommate? He has to know something."

Dan shook his head again. "While we are going to interrogate him because it is procedure, it's highly unlikely he's going to know anything different. He was with Robin the entire time. We can see that on the footage. Could he know anything else? Possibly. But we can't count on him." 

Arin slumped in his chair, looking at the security camera images over and over again. "So what you're telling me that we're going cold?"

"Not yet, but it's more likely than not." 

He groaned loudly and threw the pictures on his desk. "So now what? We interview this guy, and then what?" 

"We do what we can."

- 

 Jack walked in on not necessarily a clusterfuck of a tornado, but certainly something akin to it. 

There was an unconscious man (who smelled vaguely like booze) lying on his couch with his limbs all out of order. Jack had never seen the man before in his life. Robin was bleeding - not only could he smell it, but his whole arm was bandaged like a burn victim and he wasn't exactly hiding it. Mark was leaning nonchalantly on the arm of the couch, occasionally positioning the man so that his body didn't slump off and onto the floor. Goddamn his life was weird. 

"Just because you can't bring literal fucking roadkill into the apartment doesn't mean you can upgrade by bringing drunk homeless people in!"

"I can't bring people who will be noticed if they disappear, which is damn near close to everyone. The only people who aren't noticed when they disappear are the homeless or the drug addicts, and that's only because the two sometimes clash with each other. If I bring someone who is a well off college student or a regular person with a job or family, people are gonna catch on, how on Earth did you think I survived for this long?"

Robin groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Mark, take him back."

"I would, if I wasn't aware of Jack literally drooling 10 feet away from me."

Jack didn't even notice he was drooling and it was kinda gross. He had gotten it on his winter coat. " _Oh shit_ , no no I'm good. Get rid of him."

Robin couldn't help but snicker. "Sorry, sorry. Isn't funny. Point made."

Jack walked closer to the man, who was snoring softly. How he was sleeping through all of this was beyond him. "Is he smashed?"

"Not completely. I tasted it, he's got a few beers in him."

"Dude, it's like 2 pm on a tuesday, I don't want to get drunk. I've still got one more class to go to."

"You won't get drunk, c'mon. You'll get like mildly tipsy."

"Still!" 

"To get it out of your system I'll let you have a sip from me, alright?"

Jack scoffed. "Y'know, I still don't agree with this."

"You really don't have a choice unless you're thinking about killing Robin within the next 10 minutes."

"I think the FUCK NOT, motherfucker!" Robin screeched from the kitchen.

Jack sighed, pulling up the guy's sleeve and prodding around a bit to find a vein. The guy stirred, and Jack got a good look at him for the first time during this whole ordeal. He looked sad - he had a 5 o'clock shadow with deep circles around his eyes. His crew cut was greasy and on the brink of matting, and his overcoat looked beaten up. It occurred to him that this might not be a homeless man, just some guy who got too drunk and fell asleep on the sidewalk. _This guy needs better friends,_ Jack thought to himself. 

"I'm counting down the minutes until you lose your will and control over yourself and it's 5 minutes, so tick tock. I'm not gonna take you down." 

"Jesus, I'm getting to it!" 

This was still so foreign to him and it grossed him out to no end. This dude could have HIV or something, which was making him chicken out the more he thought about it.  _It's fine. He probably doesn't have HIV._ Trying to convince himself that this was safe just made it worse.

"I can't get HIV, can I?"

Mark rolled his eyes, very obviously exasperated. "You're asking me if you get diseases when you know damn well that you live forever?"

_Oh yeah._

"Sorry, sorry. Forgot." Jack sucked it up and sunk his mouth down on the man's wrist, blood flooding into his mouth. Didn't taste bad, didn't taste great. But the noise of relief he made when he felt his stomach fill was more than enough evidence that this would suffice. 

Robin turned his head away, partly out of naive courtesy and another out of disgust. Do you look away at these sort of things? Better safe than sorry. Mark wasn't visibly paying attention, but he gave a small smirk; he had finally gotten Jack to listen to him. Stubborn asshole. 

After a good 30 seconds, Mark managed to get Jack off of him, who was almost gasping at the loss. He wasn't even close to full, but at this point he was just going to accept that he was going to perpetually feel starving for the rest of his unending life. "Why'd you do that?" he mumbled, blue eyes returning from the murky black as he wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve. 

"You've already taken 1.5 pints, and I'm not going to let you kill him."

"I was already killing him?" Jack said to himself, knotting his hair in between his fingers. "I could've gone forever."

"That's the game. You're strong, you're fast, you live forever, and yet you're a danger to society." Mark stood up, stretching his back. "I'm gonna go return him. Someone will pick him up eventually." 

He grabbed the man by the arm and slung him over his shoulder, where he slumped. He almost could've looked dead if he wasn't snoring. 

Jack pulled his knees up to his chest, trying not to freak out about every single time he had to eat. He had to become desensitized to this shit eventually. But he almost didn't want that to happen. "What happened to you?" He looked to Robin's arm, doing something to get his mind off the subject.

Robin looked up, remembering that he had a huge bandage on his left arm. "Oh. Motherfucker broke a beer bottle and swung at me. You okay?"

Jack nodded. "I'll feel better someday." He said quietly, getting up from the floor. He teetered back and forth a little bit, remembering that the guy had a blood alcohol content of 0.14. He put his arm against the wall to stabilize himself. 

Robin got up with him and put Jack's arm over his shoulder. "You good?" He chuckled, noticing how his friend's knees were starting to buckle. 

"Yeah, yeah.. Just- kinda drunk." He laughed lightly, shaking his head. "What a head rush, damn." 

"That happens! It's like cigarettes, you have one, feel nice for like a minute and then it's gone." Mark shouted from the foyer. He had made it to the main hallway towards the door and was about to go drop off the man. "Can one of you open the door for me?"

"Yeah, I'll get it!" Robin said, setting Jack down on the couch. "Don't throw up on the couch." 

"I'm tipsy, not smashed you asshole." Jack retorted, his s's becoming a little bit slurred. 

Robin jogged to the front door, bypassing Mark with a very obvious haul in hand. He snickered to himself, reaching for the doorknob.

Right as he was about to turn it, a loud banging rapped against the wood. 

"Is anybody home? Boston police!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey bet you thought you would never see updates to this again!!! yeah so long story short i have depression but its cool! I promise ill try to finish this <3

**Author's Note:**

> hey so i don't expect anyone to like this this is more of a brain dump of an idea I've had for forever then anything but if someone wants me to see this through i will


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